As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
As processors, graphics cards, random access memory (RAM) and other components in information handling systems have increased in clock speed and power consumption, the amount of heat produced by such components as a side-effect of normal operation has also increased. Often, the temperatures of these components need to be kept within a reasonable range to prevent overheating, instability, malfunction and damage leading to a shortened component lifespan. Accordingly, air movers (e.g., cooling fans and blowers) have often been used in information handling systems to cool information handling systems and their components.
To control temperature of components of an information handling system, an air mover may direct air over one or more heatsinks thermally coupled to individual components. Device manufacturers are increasingly producing peripheral components in information handling systems that include an “active” cooling system comprising an air mover (e.g., fan) and heat sink local to (e.g., mounted or mechanically attached to) the peripheral component for cooling the peripheral component by driving air over the heat sink to cool the peripheral component, or a “passive” cooling system (e.g., another heat sink) that serves to reject heat of the peripheral component to air driven by one or more system-level air movers for cooling multiple components of an information handling system in addition to the peripheral component.
However, existing architectures provide inadequate dual-mode control of the active and passive cooling components. For instance, many thermal control systems lack an ability to detect the existence of a failure of the active cooling system air mover and react to such failure in order to provide adequate cooling from system-level air movers.